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they don't come here. there is no contact with them. chicken and egg problem?

They have come here in the past and been met with a lot of crap. Then there is the fact that you don't know if they are watching which we've been told some of them are.

If you make linux development hostile which is what a lot of members here are doing the developers won't want to work on our problems , and in fact instead of us being a positive influence on them , it can turn into a negative influence.

If you provide a positive environment for the developers where you are constructive and make them feel welcome they'll feel much better about working on linux and they'll tell their colleagues , some of which may ask to change development teams. Furthermore they'll be more productive because they won't be dealing with all the negativity.

Originally Posted by yoshi314

talking to a wall is frustrating.

Frustration is part of life , how we deal with it is what separates mature adults from the rest.

What do you really want? To bitch and moan or to have a better chance at a good driver?

Originally Posted by yoshi314

management only cares about the numbers. we are linux users, a mere couple % of the market. do you think they care about every single one of us?

we don't have enough power to make a difference, besides ati sells its chips to other vendors, and that's where most of us get their cards from.

Yes and who buys those cards? You of course , some of the linux users will be in control of big purchases for their work , others will be consultants who have a great deal of influence over their customers and others will be people who have influence over their friends , family and acquaintances.

AMD has a reasonably good history of working with linux. I think that is a by product of that but unless people smarten up it could easily be much slower and eventually canned.

Originally Posted by Svartalf

What you're seeing is the end result of AMD (In the form of ATI, when it was a separate entity...) NOT listening to us for years now. What you're seeing is an end result of us DOING what you suggest, only to get silence. Talking to a brick wall gets old.

So why not give the new corporate culture a chance to take hold instead of kicking it whilst it's down? It's akin to kicking a pregnant woman just before she's about to give birth to the next generation.

Originally Posted by Svartalf

The biggest problem here is that AMD overpromised and underdelivered on the drivers at this point- until they at least deliver something USEFUL to everyone or get us the tech specs out the door, you're going to see people taking pot-shots at them.

It isn't help though, so why do it? It takes time for new development teams to get a handle on the code base and development practises. It'll take time for AMD/ATI to ramp up it's linux developers.

Furthermore the silence from AMD/ATI on these forums could easily be for several reasons. Whenever they say something it gets used back against them in the future so it's better for them to keep quiet and not take the risk. Then we've got the fact they are working in a corporate environment especially one that is still changing due to merging between two companies. I can certainly understand them being careful about what they say, since it can be hard to get permission to release details or speak on behalf of AMD/ATI. Speaking out of turn can get you fired in a corporate environment. I dunno about you but if I was a developer especially when the world is heading into a recession I'd be careful about my job.

Originally Posted by Svartalf

If I don't see results here after a while, though...

You'll turn into another disappointed kid like all the rest instead of emailing the people who can influence management and moving onto another graphics card?

Originally Posted by Svartalf

They don't understand Linux. They have had the opportunity for some time now to staff the Linux side of things up (Don't think desktop, think general purpose supercomputing- GPUs excel as coprocessors for cluster computing...) and they've chosen to lower their staffing until recently on anything OpenGL related...

They are doing it now though and it'll take them time to understand linux. If you don't give them the time and the positive development environment the new linux dev will be stillborn.

Originally Posted by Svartalf

Not really something that engenders anything other than rebukes, if you think about it.

Yes and rebukes will only slowly the driver down. I'm not asking people to keep taking it from AMD/ATI. I'm simply asking them to stop giving the developers shit and if you are fed up then email AMD/ATI Management and tell them why you are switching to their competitor.

Originally Posted by Svartalf

We've been DOING that. Myself, especially. I can tell you up-front, that they didn't listen for the last 2-3 years when they knew there were real problems and that there was a market segment they needed to be in that they weren't at all supporting right. They were more interested in chasing Microsoft than anything else at that time. Honest.

You can keep bitching about the past like little kids or you can move on and give them another chance , that or you can change over to a competitor. However the most harmful thing you can do to linux development is to do what people are doing and keep bitching. If you want to help linux development instead then either be helpful or move on to another graphics chip manufacturer and let them know why , in fact let them know it's influencing your decisions for other AMD products.

Hanging around and bitching is only being dead weight.

Originally Posted by Svartalf

I've tempered my remarks because of what all I know (and can't tell..) but in the same space, I can't ask them to do the same. I understand why.

If you understand why then you'll understand it's not helping.

Personally I wouldn't be surprised to see another forum develop with more helpful members and to see AMD/ATI ignore this one if you keep going on along like this. It's your choice.

Just because I haven't been a regular linux user for that long doesn't mean I haven't been keeping an eye on it for over a decade and watching what goes on. It was something to watch out of curiosity as a computer scientist and developer. Personally I'm more interested in research but I also do some consulting development since it's far more lucrative and offers some interesting problems. I work in the embedded space so it makes sense for me to watch what AMD/ATI are doing especially their movements in that area. I see how potentially in the near future how some AMD/ATI products could be useful for me in both research and consulting ventures. The consulting ventures are much larger though , ultimately I'm always on the look out when developing a product to see how I can use it for research as well and make use of economy of scale for it and other products.

We can't control what AMD/ATI are doing but we can influence em. They are in a fragile state at the moment especially with the world going into recession and the global credit crunch. I know what I would be doing if I was in their shoes now. I'd be making sure my budget was going into the most lucrative areas and for the speculative portion of it I'd be making it sure it went into the areas most likely to pay off or deliver good PR.

I'm only seeing negative influence coming from here and that could and likely will backfire on the community. You can all act in your best interests in the long term or you can be selfish and keep spreading the negativity and bad PR.

If you've had enough from AMD/ATI then fine move on , otherwise look in your best interests and focus on what's important which is improving the chances of getting good linux support.

I think that some users in this forum are somewhat naive to the world of driver development. It is an enormous task, it can take a lot of time to fix some bug due the nature of writing a driver itself. Some may say that the devs at AMD are getting paid, obviously they are being paid, otherwise they should not be called AMD developers. Some may say that it is their work, and it is! The matter is, as said before, writing a driver is an enormous task! I've made my degree on this issue and, if it is really hard for the designer of the chip to get it working, it is even harder to make it , lets say, understand the OS language. AMD devs must have worked extra hours during all this time to bring stable drivers for linux. I think that all the rageous people complaining about AMD should read more about electronics and IT to post comments. The processors are not made with tenths of transistors, they are made with hundreds of millions of transistors nowadays, using quantic principles for manufacturing, therefore, everything is based on probabilities. You will spend a couple of years testing your instructions set only, then you will try to get a driver, and, surprise!, it is also funded on probabilities! In this phase you will spend almost all of the life span of the product. So, stop moaning and whining about the drivers, they will improve for better, that is for sure, but stop thinking that the code comes from a magical place at your request and, please, stop thinking that perfection comes from nothing, it comes from work.

I think that some users in this forum are somewhat naive to the world of driver development. It is an enormous task, it can take a lot of time to fix some bug due the nature of writing a driver itself.

One should be very, very careful about making comments like this... You might find yourself embarrassed.

Among my open source credits...

Versalogic VSBC6 Industrial I/O drivers for Linux

Maintenance of the Intelogis Parallel Port networking drivers.

Developer (one of many...) and one-time maintainer of the Utah-GLX drivers.

Several different USB check scanners...

I've done numerous closed-source drivers for companies as well, under contract, for Linux.

I know device drivers. It's my bread and butter, if you will. Just because I do consulting work for LGP, it's not the sustaining income, not because it can't be- it's because I'm making a lot more money doing the driver and embedded systems consulting than I could doing the LGP work alone.

I even KNOW how hard it is to do 3D drivers. It's harder than one would think, but not as hard as you're making it out to be.

To each and every one of the people commenting on that we shouldn't be complaining like we are, I will YET AGAIN observe that if this was Windows they were doing this stuff on they would be out of business- period. It doesn't matter that you think that we should be nice. Sorry, we've been that for some time now- if you're just coming in and think that this is going to get you anywhere, you're sadly mistaken. In the 12+ years I've been doing professional Linux development work, it doesn't matter if you're nice or not. Either they do it or they don't- you're viewed, rightly or wrongly, as a very, very small niche market at best.

I know, I see it every day now. Have been for 12 years.

It is flatly not acceptable to ship drivers with the kinds of memory leaks that 8.11 shipped with, and the three previous versions shipped with. I don't care how "nice" they're being- it's NOT acceptable however you slice it. This is coming from a software engineer with over 20 years of industry experience.

Don't expect me to be nice (though I really am being that way, though you might not see it...) when they do things like that.